CD Review: Tad Morose - March Of The Obsequious (Power Metal, 2022)

Reviewing a album of the swedish power metal icon Tad Morose has been a dream I always had. So you can easily imagine how I felt when the "March Of The Obsequious" album hit my inbox. I've been more than excited when the download started. Have I been disappointed or am I glad about the new songs?

A look upon the present line-up of Tad Morose.

To make it short. Tad Morose deliver quality music. They've always sticked to the formula to release music worth listening to.

This also goes for the new album. It heavily hits the same route that the predecessors of the "new" era that the Revenant LP started have set up.

The music is comprised of pure metal riffing. The drums and bass guitars heavily follow on the trails of the compositions. I think it's a no-brainer up to this point for many metal heads.

Inside view on each track

The title track and "Witches Dance" benefit of the vocals and go in straight without doubts. It's just with track number three that things become a bit harder. The high pitched vocals climb to the max on this tune. That's of high quality but sometimes I would like to see them set a bit lower because it can be a bit too much of it all at times.

This goes very much for the next number, too. A solid midtempo song but the vocals leave a feeling of overload behind.

Happily the next one "Dying" offers more variations, some even a bit unusual for the Swedish band.

"Escape" returns to the fine tradition of compact riffage mixed up with power pushing drums - a combination that leaves room for evolution of the track through it's duration. Such songs go in quickly. 

The cover art has become darker than on all the previous releases.

"A Trail Of Sins" comes with nice melody blocks and solid riffing. I think those melodies should point a bit to the old Tad Morose Records, those days where the band still used keyboards. I love those songs and it's cool to see the band pays sort of hommage to those days when they started releasing music (yet at a more progressive level).

This calls for more and the band heeds to this with "A Quilt Of Shame". A good midtempo creeper with a lot of changes in the vocals. Sometimes these composition feels like a journey in my mind.

"The Legion" unvels itself as a midtempo and very loud vocal oriented song. The mix sets a spot on the vocals that aim for high peaks. Once again I think less could have been more here. High vocal performance is great but please not that often.

The album closer shows few softer notes coming in at the start and changing into rougher territory shortly afterwards.

This scheme carries on through the whole song. A good idea to finish the record in a more unusual way.

Is it worth it?

The whole album is mixed to a loud volume so make sure to chose the volume control carefully.

Most songs are great but I'd like to hear the band mixing the next album a different way with less loud high vocals. It could make the music more variable this way.

Besides that don't hesitate to give "March Of The Obsequious" a try because it's still a well outworked album with some fine surprises for those who are longtime fans of the band.

You can listen to the full record on a digital service of your choice. This overview offers links to Deezer, Tidal, Amazon Music as well as to Spotify and Apple Music.

The webshop of GMR Music holds the chance to order physical copies on Vinyl, undead Compact Disc and even a Digipack with signed card and pin. 

Pre-listening of the new Tad Morose album St. Demonius

The full new Tad Morose album is up for listening. But better hurry, it's only online 'til friday. You can check it out at the website of the Decibel Megazine. The official release date is 28th August 2015. If you can't purchase the record at a store near you then you may order through the webshop of the band's record company Despotz Records.

Having heard the first half of the record I was very satisfied what the band has put out this time. Most of the tracks are midtempo but with steaming heavy guitar riffs and most of all very, very high pitched vocals. To me it sounds like a mixture of the new Tad Morose that we experienced on "Revenant" with elements of the past, most of all the "A Mended Rhyme" album came to my mind but without any keyboards in the sound at all. Therefore guitar effects have been used to give the tracks a deeper and atmospheric flair. Like that a lot. Can't wait to hear the second half. :-)

The band will be on tour in Europe in a good week. If you want to check out the dates just see my article about it.

Tad Morose to kick off European Tour in September in support of new album "St. Demonius"

Things may take a while in life but in the end they can turn out for the good. That's what I thought when I got the info that Tad Morose will finally be able to play a proper tour for their brand new record entitled "St. Demonius". The band will be joined by their fellow countrymen in Silent Call, so you'll also be able to discover a new band if you don't know them yet. I've discovered a lot of new bands live and often it was a very pleasant surprise that came my way. So one more reason to go to one of the shows. :-)

The complete tour dates are shown on the poster below.

(c) by Tad Morose, used with kind permission

Tad Morose have been part of the heavy metal scene for over 20 years, and so far time they released seven studio albums. Their newest, eighth offering, "St. Demonius" is scheduled for the August 28th release via Despotz Records. The new album is the second release in a row featuring ex-Steel Attack singer Ronny Hemlin, after the release of 2013's "Revenant."

In an interview with metalshockfindland.com, guitarist Christer "Krunt" Andersson said about the new album following: "It’s Tad Morose kind of metal, a little bit more of everything I think. A lot of the lyrics are about the crap that’s going around in today’s world, people never ever seem to learn from history. And all the religious bullshit that’s going on, why can’t people just sit back, shut up, play heavy metal, drink beer, smile and have a good time? Let everyone believe in whatever they believe, as long as they don’t hurt anybody. That’s a lot of the things going on in the lyrics."

If you haven't heard some music of the new Tad Morose record then here is the video for "Your own demise" for you to check out.

Tad Morose release first videoclip for the new album St. Demonius

Yes, this time it happily didn't took that long. ;-) After a 10 year's break from releasing a new album Tad Morose returned in 2013 with a powerfull, hard and riff-filled album called "Revenant".

Having played some shows in the meantime the band didn't hesitate to write new songs and has now announced that the next .album "St. Demonius" is ready for release on August 28th 2015. The tracklist goes like this:

1. Bow to the Reaper's Blade
2. Forlorn
3. Where Ignorance Reigns
4. Remain
5. Black Fire Rising
6. Day of Reckoning
7. The Shadows Play
8. Darkness Prevail
9. Fear Subside
10. Dream of Memories
11. The World Is Growing Old
12. Your Own Demise

The album can be pre-ordered through the webshop of Depotz Records in two configurations, one of them is a bundle of the Digipack CD with a poster handsigned by the band along with a proper band T-Shirt with the new album cover on it.

And how is the record going to sound like? Well this question can easily be answered with the brand new video the band has released for the song "Forlorn".

If you want to see the band live you may be happy enough to see them on a European tour that has been announced for September 2015 on Facebook. Check back for the exact dates on that page or keep an eye on this article.

Morgana Lefay & Tad Morose to play HFL Festival in Sweden 2015

Sweden has a lot of great bands to offer! For example the well known bands Morgana Lefay and Tad Morose come from there. The even better thing is that those two are going to play together at a newcomer festival in Sweden in the upcoming summer of 2015.

As announced on the Facebook page of Morgana Lefay the festival is going to take place from 24th to 25th of July 2015 at the Folketspark Motala at Bomber Street, 59100 Motala, Sweden. The entrance fee has been set to SEK 500 / SEK 300 for all the people that are not member in the Club Bomber that takes care of the organisation of the festival together with Hardrocare for livet.

Besides the mentioned bands the following groups will also play live:

LILLASYSTER
LUDOR
MAN.MACHINE.INDUSTRY
KING OF ASGARD
CARNAL FORGE
STERBHAUS
SIR REG
SIDEBURN
THE HAWKINS
VENGHA
REVELATIONS
RAVAGED
ZEPHYRA
THRASH HUNTER

Also make sure to check out the eventpage that has been set up for the festival or head over to the Facebook pages of Club Bomber or Hardrocare for Livet to make sure not to miss out about all the further updates.

Update 2015/05/07: Two big new names have been added to the line-up! One of them are the well known swedish legends from "Falconer" who after a longer break have returned in 2014 with a brand new album called "Black Moon Rising".
The second one is a well known legend from the days of the new wave of british heavy metal: Paul Di'Anno!!!

Finally a proper website for the festival has been set up which collects all the informations on one place outside of all the posts on groups and eventpages of Facebook. Great to see this has been set up since it's a pain to look through all of the posts to find the particular information one is looking for.

Doublepack: hear the new albums from Tad Morose and Saxon

Fresh albums have just rushed in. After 10 years of silence it's nearly unbelievable but Tad Morose have just released a new record called "Revenant". Sounds very,very heavy on the first three tracks. Glad to hear the new record, finally the wait is over. But listen for yourselfs at the website of the legendary Sweden Rock Magazine, sometimes wonders happen...

The second band on today's agenda are Saxon. They released a album full of re-recordings of classic tracks. They have so many of songs to choose from, so I think the choice might have been hard. Just check it out for yourselfs right at this location.

New preview of upcoming Tad Morose album found

I did talk about the upcoming Tad Morose CD "Revenant" already sometime earlier and did post a first album preview that the band did set up on youtube. Just yesterday I did look around on facebook and discovered that the band has put out yet another trailer on youtube!

Great, so I headed over and listened and enjoyed it very much. The new vocalist Ronny Hemlin seems to be a very fitting replacement to the excellent vocalist Urband Breed that did put his mark on the Tad Morose sound for a very long time. I'll keep you updated on the progress and the release date of the album but you are of couse welcome to like the band's official facebook page and stay in contact with them on that way. The band also has a nice website which can be found here. In addition tourdates for germany have been announced. (taken from Facebook page) 7.9.2012 HAMBURG, Bambi Galore 8.9.2012 Andernach, JUZ Live Club (Swordbrothers festival) Anyway, just listen to the new snippets for yourself right here. (seems like the trailer has been taken down by the band, look a little further down there's a new first teaser for you to check out).




Update 2013/12/02: The band has been interviewed/reviewed by the Against magazine. You can read it for free below and/or download it directly from the magazine's website.

Update 2013/11/19: Finally the BIG news has arrived! Just before the album will be released tomorrow the band has allowed the legendary Sweden Rock megazine the honor to offer the readers of their website a pre-listening of the full album as a stream via Sound Cloud. So let's head over and listen to this one, just did listen to the first three tracks for myselfs and they rock. Maybe I'll post a album review sometime in the near future. Until then enjoy the return of Tad Morose!  

Update 2013/10/28: The full version of the second single "Millenium Lie" has been posted by the band. It can be purchased through the following links:
Amazon
Spotify

 
Update 2013/10/10: Teaser of our new upcoming single "Millenium Lie", to be released 20 October has been posted by the band at facebook along with the cover for it. Check it out, it's quite different from the other stuff released so far.

 


Update 2013/09/29: The first single of the forthcoming album has been released as digital download. You can grab it from itunes and spotify.


Update 2013/09/24: Finally the official video for the first single "Beneath a Veil of Crying Souls" has arrived. Check it out below. Besides that the band is about to build about a new homepage which can be found at www.tadmorose.se

Update 2013/09/17: The band has just released a first teaser of the upcoming song "Beneath a Veil of Crying Souls". Reads like this also may be the first single of the new album. The single is set for release on 28th of September 2013. (all information taken from the official facebook page of the band). So how do you like this snippet? Please let me know in the comments section below.



Update 2013/09/02: Ronny Hemlin just posted in the comments on this article below to let me know that the album is done and will be out on November 20. 2013. In addition the band once again posted on facebook and did let the people know where to order the new album. It will be released through Despotz Records as a standard CD and there's also a special Pre-Booking Package available that can only be purchased via Despotz Records. Besides the CD it also includes a T-Shirt with the album cover on it as well as a signed poster. You can order this special item right here.

For a closer look on the nice artwork and the tracklist of the new album called "Revenant" just click on this link. It's also the location where you can order the standard CD.


Update 2013/08/21: The band just announced on their facebook page the following: "Tad Morose to release "Revenant" on Despotz Records November 20." They also linked a swedish article to that post. 
Update 2013/02/25: A few days ago the band posted this on their facebook site:

"The Album is now recorded and ready to be mixed!

.... thought you'd like to know that. \m/"

Some time ago they also posted a very short snippet from the studio recordings so I put it up here as well. Thought it might fit well in here.

 

Tad Morose

Wow, I wanted to write about this band for a long time and finally it's about to go out and tell the people about this great band from Sweden. I remember been stumbled upon this band through a friend. He purchased a maxi CD from the band. It did feature a track by Tad Morose entitled "Sender of thoughts" as well as "Lost in time" and "Here after". The band was more in a progressive style at the time, mixing melodic keyboards with hard and straight guitar riffing. They also had a very melodic vocalist who left a lot of space for dreaming and haunting interpretation to the listener of the song. I still like these tracks a lot and think that the album "Sender of thoughts" is one of the best one's out there but so underrated and unknown like only few albums I've come across so far.

With the change of the vocalist to a young man called Urban Breed the band also decided to change over to a more powermetal-like style in their sound. The line-up did last several years that saw the band producing 4 albums up to 2003. At some point Urband Breed left the band after the very good album "Modus Vivendi" back in 2003, leaving the band searching for a replacement. I should take quite a while until the found Ronny Hemlin in 2008 who is known from Steel Attack and Kenneth Jonsson in 2012 on guitars. Things began slowly to take shape again and by now the new album is closer than ever, entitled "Revenant". The band recently released a first trailer for the album presenting some fine snippets of four of the songs of the album. Check it out right now!

The band can also been seen at these year's Sworbrother festival here in Germany.

Check out their official website for detailed info and complete discography.